Royal Court

• Improvised comedy TV show Thank God You’re Here returned last Wednesday after a 14 year hiatus, with its premiere drawing an impressive 684,000 viewers.
• The premise sees each celebrity guest costumed into a character – who is a complete surprise to them.
• Improv grew from a set of strategies for training actors to a performing art in its own right.

Introduction to improv: from theatre to television

• The commercial success of improvised performance, peaking in the late 80s and 90s is often attributed to theatre sports.
• Theatre sports is credited as the brainchild of Keith Johnstone, whose 1979 book Impro, drawing on his experience as an educator and associate director at the Royal Court Theatre in London, is a mainstay of theatre studies reading lists.
• Part of his legacy is the term “the Johnstone school”, the principles and techniques emerging from his Calgary company Loose Moose Theatre.

Cringe and diversity

• Amy E. Seham, now a professor of theatre and dance, was a trailblazer in the critiques of improv’s homogeneity with her book Whose Improv is it Anyway?
• In the book she quotes then Australian Theatre Sports director Lyn Pierse, whose female players were “railroaded by the men onstage”.
• But the early announcement Pacquola would host inspired optimism for at least the gender skew of the series.

Improv down under

• As improvisation researcher Braínne Edge wrote in 2014 article, the US iteration suffered from “an awkward tension” between the core cast and the celebrities.
• The lack of improv training of the celebrities saw them “effectively blocking and denying the action” – one of the key transgressions of improv.
• The success of the original Thank God You’re Here in Australia – and hopefully the new season too – may owe something to earlier improv training grounds in Australia.
• For Australian comedy and the profile of improv, it might just be a case of thank god you’re back.

• ETFS Capital will not indulge the Board in its desire for an exchange of mudslinging and personal attacks.
• The Board Letter sidesteps any discussion of its documented track record of value-destructive decision-making, and its ongoing failure to execute on the massive market opportunity in ETFs.
• Fellow stockholders, WisdomTree’s entrenched Board has engaged in its latest attempt to distract stockholders from their woeful track record of value destruction, their lack of operational execution or a credible plan to drive value.
• ETFS Capital has nominated three highly qualified individuals who will act as responsible and engaged fiduciaries for the benefit of ALL stockholders.

• Alongside the creation of the new Centre, the gift will support the ongoing conservation, research, and study of the archive.
• Dr. Tristram Hunt, Director of the V&A, said: "David Bowie was one of the greatest musicians and performers of all time.
• The V&A is thrilled to become custodians of his incredible archive, and to be able to open it up for the public.
• The acquisition follows the V&A's ground-breaking 2013 exhibition, David Bowie Is…, which marked the first time a museum had been given unprecedented access to the David Bowie Archive.

• Kaywin Feldman, director of the National Gallery of Art, delivered remarks at the ceremony held at the Smithsonians National Museum of African Art, saying The National Gallery of Art is pleased to work with the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments to repatriate this sculpture and return the remarkable work where it belongswith the people of Nigeria.
• Following years of research by the National Gallery staff into the provenance of the Fowl, the National Gallery of Arts Board of Trustees voted on May 7, 2020, to deaccession the sculpture.
• Subsequently, the National Gallery communicated its interest in repatriating the sculpture to the Oba of the Royal Court of Benin.
• The sculpture has been installed in the galleries of the National Gallery periodically and has been lent several times to the National Museum of African Art.